I SAW HIM LAST AS HE STOOD ON THE BALCONY OF THE palace at
Berlin, silhouetted darkly against the brilliant light from the
room behind him. In the eyes of the immense crowd which was cheering
him he was the Fatherland. It was the eve of the War then and
there were many heavy hearts and anxious minds. To-day, to while
away the long hours of his exile on the Isle of Doorn, William
II saws, as he would in a prison yard.

What will be the verdict of history on this man who entered
life to the sound of bells and a people's cheering, and who is
ending his days bent in sorrow under the low gray sky of Holland?

Before one can judge, one must understand, and that is no easy
task. "How," as a clever woman has said, "can we
put ourselves in the place of a man whose cradle and baby shoes
are museum exhibits?" Kings from the moment of their birth
are set apart from the people. Everything conspires to isolate
them, their education, their interests, their ideas, their feelings,
their scale of values, and to judge them by the usual standards
would be unfair.

William II was no exception to this rule---quite the contrary.
His childhood was hard, destitute of all real affection. His mother
did not love him, his tutors did not understand him. Deformed
from birth, he had to learn after much physical and moral suffering
to disguise his infirmity. Had he been a private citizen he would
have been exempted from military service: instead, he was to become
the foremost soldier of his empire. Emil Ludwig, who has painted
a masterly portrait of the Emperor, attributes all his love of
pomp and display and popular applause to the fact that his education
was directed wholly to things external. We enjoy only what we
win by an effort, and all his life William II sought the limelight
in order to conceal his suffering. It was always his desire to
appear other than he was and to convince the world that he was
other than it saw him.

Popular applause more than any other thing perverts the minds
of royal children. It is said that on the day when he took the
oath the young King Michael of Roumania was frightened when he
saw the Deputies---grave, serious old gentlemen---shouting hurrah.
His Majesty burst out sobbing and took refuge behind his mother's
skirts.

William II, however, had no fear of popular applause. On the
contrary, all his life he has sought it, and it has turned his
head.

For a proper appreciation of the character of William II we
must turn to the pages which Treitschke, the historian of the
great German empire, devotes to Frederick William IV, King of
Prussia, against whom the revolution of 1848 broke out. The picture
he gives there reveals curious points of resemblance between the
great-uncle and the nephew. Neurotics both of them, unstable,
impulsive, superficially clever, workers but lacking in application,
possessed of a lively curiosity, catholic tastes, versatile talents,
natural eloquence, but lacking in good sense and with a strong
leaning to superstition, these two men might have been brothers.
The mystical orations of William II, his imperative need to have
friends and unbosom himself to them, then cast them off, his romantic
love of his people and his mediæval conception of royalty---all
this recalls the monarch who in a flash of intuition would put
his trust in Bismarck, but who was perpetually vacillating between
his ministers and his friends, pitting the one against the other.

If through many years no one in Germany dared to point this
out, it was because Frederick William died insane . . .

No one who has not seen William II in the zenith of his splendor
can appreciate what the fever of excitability can really mean.
His car would dash along the streets preceded by a trumpet blast
of the opening notes of "Die Meistersinger." He was
seen everywhere. He changed his dress ten times a day. There was
no ceremony he did not attend. Not a year passed but William II
spent two hundred days of it in traveling, and in seventeen years
he delivered five hundred and seventy-seven public speeches, that
is, one every eleven days. To hold forth, to hear himself speak,
and to see the multitude hanging on his words, was his ruling
passion. He was a painter, he was a sculptor, he composed operas
and staged them. He could always find people to praise him, although
he was notoriously lacking in talent. Besides, his taste was bad.
I remember seeing him one day when he was visiting an exhibition
of paintings. As soon as His Majesty was announced all the other
visitors flattened themselves against the wall and effaced themselves.
William II swept through the rooms at full speed. He did not stop
even at the pictures that took his fancy---he only indicated them
by an abrupt gesture, which was the signal for one of his suite
to rush forward and stick on a label bearing the words "Bought
by His Majesty the Emperor." When he had left and the ordinary
visitor could venture to walk round again, I saw that he had bought
all the worst daubs in the exhibition.

His intelligence was superior to his taste. As a rule, those
who met him for the first time were surprised at the knowledge
he showed of their own particular sphere. Having made a point
of finding out beforehand what the special interest of his visitor
was, he primed himself specially so that they might be struck
dumb with amazement. He almost always succeeded. His arm was too
short, his voice guttural, and his eye steely, but when he wished
he could be amiable and even charming--and he generally did wish
it when he met people whom he knew to be prejudiced against him,
particularly the French, and he won over a considerable number
of people in that way.

William II had a clear conception of what a modern state should
be. His efforts to assist the industrial development of his country,
his wish to found a colonial empire and a powerful fleet gave
evidence of a practical mind. Although he cannot claim all the
credit for the extraordinary economic advance which Germany made
in his reign, it must be conceded that he did nothing to hinder
it, and even assisted it to some extent.

Material prosperity diverted the mind of the German people
from political interests. When a country begins to develop, when
it sees its industries, its foreign trade, its power and its prestige
increase hour by hour, it does not bother to call its government
to account. Bismarck had created the empire on the basis of universal
suffrage, but, by reason of her industrial development, Germany
had between 1870 and 1914 become changed out of all recognition.
Under William II the empire had become a dictatorial and almost
autocratic monarchy in which popular control had no part and the
Emperor was all that counted.

Unfortunately, William II was not equal to the task which he
had set himself. Although on every possible occasion he affirmed
his omnipotence and the divine nature of his power, his will was
vacillating and weak. He was impulsive and wayward. At the very
moment when he assumed the supreme power he let it slip from his
hands into those of his irresponsible nominees.

From this there followed two very serious consequences which
appear to be paradoxical and yet count among the causes of the
War: one was the instability of the government and the other the
subordination of the civil power.

Stability and continuity of power are the great theoretical
advantages which can be cited in favor of a monarchy. They are
assured from one generation to another by family traditions and,
in the course of any single reign, by the personality of the sovereign.
Unfortunately these two forms of political continuity were both
lacking in the Germany of William II.

Misunderstanding and jealousy bet ween father and son were
traditional in the house of Hohenzollern---witness the quarrels
between Frederick the Great and his father. William II was no
exception to this rule, either in his relations with his father
or with his son.

Granted that he suffered injustice at the hands of his parents,
it is nevertheless true that on the death of the Emperor Frederick
after long suffering from a cruel malady, William II displayed
indecent haste in his anxiety to fill the rôle of Emperor
and to throw overboard all his father's ideas.

A bad son will never make a good father. Years afterwards,
the Crown Prince was to show him that. Many a time in pre-war
Berlin he became the center of the opposition. He had to be sent
away in disgrace to a garrison in North Germany, and it is said
that once at Headquarters during the War, while the Emperor was
expressing ideas that were distasteful to his son, the latter
turned to his neighbor at table and remarked in almost audible
tones, "The old man's getting more gaga than ever!"

Just as Germany did not know what it was to have a monarchy
that continued from generation to generation, so, during the reign
of William II, she did not know what it was to have continuity
of government. He had no sooner ascended the throne than his most
urgent thought was to dismiss the Iron Chancellor (now an old
man), the founder of the empire, and faithful friend of William
I---Bismarck. He seemed determined to prove the truth of Bismarck's
deadly remark to Bratiano at the Congress of Berlin: "Remember,
Bratiano, that all the Hohenzollerns are fools, coxcombs, and
ingrates!"

It must be admitted that on the question over which they parted
the Emperor was in the right, for he could grasp the new political
realities better than the old Chancellor. At the beginning of
his reign he was bent on being the Emperor of the oppressed and
the disinherited, Emperor of the Catholics and the Socialists
whom Bismarck persecuted---Emperor of the workers. But that whim
passed. Variable as he always was, William II tired of a rôle
which did not bring quickly enough the popularity for which he
thirsted. Once Bismarck was gone he had to be replaced. That was
the first misguided step which led the Emperor and his empire
on the fatal path to ruin.

William II was lacking in the quality which had enabled his
ancestors to create Prussia and enlarge it, namely, the ability
to choose wise counsellors, to trust them and keep them. The whole
greatness of William I lay in his fidelity to Bismarck. William
II could never remain faithful. He loved to have some one to confide
in---and change that some one often. In the course of his reign
he had seven different chancellors and at least four different
ministers per year.

Fickleness was perhaps not the worst of it. He surrounded himself
with second-rate personalities. He loved to shine, and could not
bear to be put in the shade by his advisers. When his ministers
had audience with him it was he alone who spoke, and he had no
friendly eye for those who tried to explain things to him. This
is shown by the story of his treatment of Pozadowsky, Minister
for Home Affairs. This minister had the lamentable habit of explaining
the business of his department to the Emperor, and the latter
used to amuse himself by sending his favorite dog to and fro between
the minister's legs to distract and confuse him.

These caprices, which were smiled upon for a time, were destined
to have tragic consequences for the empire and the world.

Bismarck had fashioned the constitution of the German empire
according to his own ideas. He had instituted between the civil
and the military power an unstable equilibrium which depended
for its maintenance on two conditions, namely, a strong personality
in the post of chancellor and a man of well-balanced judgment
and good sense on the throne. The Emperor was to hold the balance
between his counsellors.

These conditions obtained during the lifetime of William I,
Bismarck, and the aged Moltke. But under William II the whole
edifice tumbled to the ground. The civil power fell into weak
hands---an inexperienced general, a weak-willed aristocrat, an
unscrupulous diplomat, and a hide-bound bureaucrat. The ministers,
at the mercy of court cabals, the intrigues of their colleagues,
and the caprices of the Emperor, had not even the security of
parliamentary ministers who depend on public opinion. Never was
there a government so divided against itself, a government in
which, though strong to outward seeming, the ministers spied on
each other, were envious of each other, and were often not even
on speaking terms.

Between a weak and disunited civil power, and a military power
that was upheld by all the traditions of the monarchy and the
state, William II was not content to play the rôle assigned
him by the constitution. He did not know how to play it, and instead
of being the arbiter between the rival powers he supplanted them
both.

In a book of memoirs, one of the sailors of the imperial yacht
tells that William II always wished to sail the boat himself and
to take the tiller, but as he was incompetent and there was cause
to fear a mishap, a false tiller was made that he could handle
as he liked, while the boat was really sailed, secretly, by the
pilot.

It is the same picture in the German monarchy, where William
II seemed to be everything, though the state was managed, under
his name, by anonymous figures.

In the domain of home affairs William II was acutely intuitive,
but in diplomacy he was impulsive and romantic. He never had any
broad and reasoned views on the European situation, nor had he
sufficient sense to listen to his advisers.

William II---and it is a right royal eccentricity---regarded
Europe as a garden plot and politics as a family affair, with
the result that in dealing with his cousins on the thrones of
England, Russia, Austria, Hungary and Italy, he completely lost
sight of the peoples they represented and whose fate was in the
balance. He never had any conception of the actual forces which
were clashing with each other. He was carrying out, even in this
twentieth century, a purely dynastic policy. The solidarity of
thrones and the rivalry between kingdoms constituted his whole
political creed. His distrust of England, which was the ruling
idea of his reign, dated from certain slights received in his
childhood at Buckingham Palace or Osborne. The fear of seeming
inferior to his grandmother and of being baited by his uncle drove
out all other ideas from his mind. On the eve of war, he thought
he was the savior of the world when he telegraphed to Petrograd,
and when the answer of "Nicky" came in somewhat unexpected
terms he took it as a personal insult. Never before has megalomania
made such deadly ravages in a human mind.

The idea of a Germany hemmed in by wicked cousins, and the
necessity of breaking through some day, began to implant itself
in his mind between, 1906 and 1909, and, as often happens, fiction
began to usurp the place of truth. But it was not until 1913 that
peace was threatened by it. A double celebration was due to fall
that year: the centenary of the deliverance of Germany from the
yoke of Napoleon, and the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Emperor's
accession. Besides, there was the marriage of the Emperor's only
daughter. Throughout the year festivities, ceremonies, speeches
and functions came one after another. In the spring M. Jules Cambon,
the French Ambassador, a man who had time and opportunity to size
up William II and who knew him well, said prophetically: "You
will see that by the end of the year the Emperor will believe
that it was he who won the battle of Leipzig!"

That in fact is what happened: all this incense of adulation
went to his head. All intelligent observers have stated that the
Emperor, whose ambitions had hitherto been peaceful, changed fundamentally
at this time. He conceived a taste for martial glory and began
to accustom himself to the idea of war. His resistance to the
militarists and the industrialists who wanted him to take the
risk of war began to weaken. It might be said that about the New
Year of 1914 the fate of Europe and of millions of young men was
determined.

Things were at this stage when there came the crisis of July,
1914. At first William II does not appear to have realized the
full gravity of the situation. He goes off cheerfully for a holiday
and complains in his memoirs of not having been kept apprised
of what was going on. It was because he was distrusted at Berlin.
The army and the civil heads and all his advisers felt they were
on holiday when he was away. The one section hoped that his absence
would make a settlement possible and the others thought he might
be more easily persuaded that he was being attacked if he was
not present at the negotiations. Both were agreed that he must
be kept quiet and advised him to remain where he was. To return
to Berlin in spite of them required an effort on the part of the
Emperor.

On his return to Potsdam, Europe was already in a hopeless
situation. But it is by no means certain that the decisions which
it fell to William II to make would appear as harsh to him then
as subsequent events have shown them to be. What was it that he
had to do! He was to prevent France, England and Russia from drawing
a diplomatic and economic net round Germany. To do this one threatening
gesture was enough. The history of 1908 and 1911 would repeat
itself, order would be restored at once and the whole world would
see how great the power of Germany was. Russia would hasten to
renew her commercial treaty: France would cease to increase her
army, and England her fleet. The Triple Entente would be broken
and the balance of power reversed. Without firing a single shot
the German army would have secured the economic and diplomatic
domination of Europe.

Such was the program on which William II was to rely ---at
least if he had one at all. War was a risk that had to be faced,
but it would not occur. It was in that sense that the Emperor
could go on repeating during the War, "I never wished it";
but "it" was the deadly consequence of what he had
wished.

The German emperor entered into the War "with a light
heart," as Emile Ollivier would have said. The whole efforts
of his staff during the last eight days of July, 1914, were to
persuade him that he was being attacked by Russia and he must
go to war in the defense of his country and his honor. All the
tissue of faked evidence, the story of the Russian mobilization,
the Nuremberg aeroplanes, the violation of frontiers ---these
were thought to be aimed at the deception of the German people
and the world at large. What a mistake! It was William II whom
they were meant to deceive, and they succeeded.

Then there came the War. Henceforward the role of William II
was ended. The Emperor was the first to go under in the whirlpool
which resulted. At the very hour when the autocracy of which he
had dreamed was to become a reality all his will evaporated. It
was Germany's tragedy when the monarchy was constitutional to
have an autocrat, and to be without one when autocracy was needed.
Constitutionally, he was commander-in-chief of the army and the
fleet---the "War Lord" of his speeches and of the German
communiqués. The great fear of the German militarists had
always been that he would take his rôle seriously and interfere
in operations. He was known to be without ability and it was thought
that he might embarrass the Staff. That was not the case. William
II on this occasion showed more sense than at any other time in
his career. He completely effaced himself, and all the more honor
to him when we think of the incapacity of Moltke, the moral worthlessness
of Falkenhayn and the noisy popularity of Hindenburg, which totally
eclipsed that of the "War Lord."

The life that William II led was a life made up of railway
journeys between Potsdam and the army Headquarters. At Potsdam
he felt himself removed from everything, for policy was determined
at Headquarters. In the palace the atmosphere was oppressive.

The life of William II had always been void of any feminine
affection. His mother neglected him. His wife, whom he had married
for political reasons, was too much his intellectual inferior
to be able to wield the least influence over him. He never knew
either the delights of clandestine adventures or the comfort of
a home. The War had accentuated the pietist tendencies of the
Empress and she had purged the court of all its youthful elements.
William II was surrounded by solemn old men, whose company soon
became unbearable to one so full of life.

Only his daughter-in-law, the Crown Princess, was able to amuse
him, all the more so because they were linked by an equal contempt
for the Crown Prince!

What could one do at Potsdam? Everything William II cared for---travel,
hunting, ceremony, receptions--- was forthwith prohibited. After
some time the Emperor could stand it no longer, and he went off
to Headquarters. There he was made to feel himself superfluous
because he was never consulted on anything. "The Emperor,"
he wrote, "was ignored by all." He was only a nuisance
with his pomp and his ceremonial, his white and gold train and
his copper bath. When he went to the front it was to hold reviews
and distribute decorations---parades which only wearied the army.
Wherever he was William II was de trop and was sensible
of the general impatience which his presence roused.

This soon became too much of a trial for his nerves. In 1916,
when, instead of the glorious ending he had counted on, he saw
the long drawn out agony ahead, he had a fit of nervous depression,
and alternated between moods of exaltation and fits of weeping.
After Verdun and the Somme, which proved the Allies' power of
resistance, his morale gave way suddenly. He was smitten with
a veritable passion for peace. This desire became at moments so
intense that it was in danger of imperilling the army. The Emperor
gave all sorts of mistaken commands. One day Ludendorf had to
call in the Crown Prince in order to get William II to listen
to reason.

The Emperor had always been superstitious and readily susceptible
to fortune tellers' predictions. He often admitted it to his friends.
Now there was a prophecy that his dynasty. would perish tragically
in the course of his reign, and when events began to go badly
with the German armies the Emperor was thinking all the time of
this old prophecy.

From December, 1916, his neurasthenia became acute. When, in
1917, Headquarters were changed to Kreuznach, the Emperor went
for a cure at Homburg. While there, he wept practically all the
time. He had to be given continual assurances of victory. He was
taken to the front to be present at small local gains to see the
prisoners, for it was only the sight of prisoners which could
rouse him from his torpor. It was the sight of thousands of Italians
taken by the Germans on the Isonzo which gave him heart and set
him on his feet again.

His suite, fearful of a renewed collapse, systematically hid
the truth from him. And so, lulled into false hope by optimistic
news, William II did not see the disaster that was approaching.

The Staff at the beginning of 1918 had played its last card
on the battlefields of France, and lost. From the end of July
Ludendorf knew that there was no hope. That conviction spread
from the Staff to Berlin. William II made up his mind then to
appeal to what he had always denied his own people---a democratic
government---and the new Chancellor, Max von Baden, got into touch
with President Wilson. Peace negotiations were begun, and suddenly
revealed to the German people the truth of the disaster which
had been kept from them.

What was to become of the Emperor in this extremity! That did
not seem to worry the General Staff. Once more there was only
one idea---keep him away. The Emperor, however, whom the Chancellor
no longer consulted, was getting impatient at Potsdam and suddenly
decided to go to Spa. That was his last active move. From that
moment his rôle was over. He was to be the sport of fate.

On all sides came demands for his abdication. William II, who
had not seen the débâcle coming and who was not prepared
for it, talked about it, resisted it and wrangled over it. He
did not understand that there was no time. to lose. He was the
obstacle to peace---and did not know it. But the decisions that
he could not take for himself were taken for him by others. At
Berlin his abdication was published before he had signed it. At
Spa he was put into a car bound for an unknown destination. The
proud monarch, whose words and deeds had kept Europe busy for
thirty years, was now a nameless thing without a will. On November
1st, 1918, he crossed the Dutch frontier in the gray light of
the early morning.

WILLIAM II

His people have never forgiven him. The war and the defeat
were misfortunes, but the flight was dishonor. There was no use
saying that William II had not wanted that, just as he had not
wanted the rest. It was no use saying that he had wished to spare
his people the horrors of invasion and civil war. He will live
in history as the man who could not bear to face the unspeakable
disaster he had brought upon his people, and fled his responsibilities.

The Allies wanted to bring him to judgment. What a mistake!
All they could have done by condemning him would have been to
make him great. William II in the seeming quiet of his refuge
in Holland is suffering the most terrible punishment that can
be meted out to a man---the punishment of living through his own
downfall and death.

.

FRANCIS-JOSEPH

FRANCIS-JOSEPH, EMPEROR OF AUSTRIA, APOSTOLIC KING of Hungary,
King of Bohemia, of Dalmatia, of Croatia, of Slavonia, of Illyria
and of Galicia, King of Jerusalem, etc., was called upon to bear
the heaviest burden that can ever fall to the lot of a king: to
live too long, to reign too long.

History records few kings who lived to grow old and yet left
pleasant memories to their people. After all his years of glory
Louis XIV lived to see the reverse of the Spanish Succession and
to mourn the loss of friend after friend. Louis XV could arouse
only contempt in the hearts of his people at the end of his reign,
the brilliant beginning of which had earned for him the title
of "Bien-Aimé." This is true even of Queen Victoria,
for to-day her memory is dimmed by the reproach of having dominated
too many generations and of having kept the throne too long from
Edward VII.

Francis-Joseph is no exception. If he had died only three years
earlier he would have gone down to posterity as a benevolent peace-loving
prince high in the esteem of his subjects. Only some sour historian
could then have ventured to criticize his greatness, whereas at
present it is generally recognized that his longevity, far from
being a blessing, brought countless disasters on his house, on
his people, and on Europe.

The thought of so interminable a life makes the brain reel.
Francis-Joseph was born in 1830. He rode on his grandfather's
knee, the Emperor Francis who had been the host of all Europe
at the Congress of Vienna. He played at the skirts of his aunt,
Marie-Louise, the wife of Napoleon. He trembled before Metternich,
who was still all-powerful. He knew Europe before the coming of
the railway, he was the most important ruler of a Germany still
to be united and of an Italy not yet free, and was able before
he died to hear the far-off thunder of the guns at Verdun. His
life more or less symbolizes the history of a century.

Francis-Joseph was not destined for the throne; the revolution
of 1848 and two abdications, those of his uncle and his father,
were needed to place him there unexpectedly at the age of eighteen.
But it is doubtful whether his youth and lack of experience are
sufficient excuse for the first official acts of his reign. The
first was to revoke the constitution solemnly granted by his uncle
that is, he broke faith with his people. The second was to call
to his aid the autocrat of all the Russias, the Czar Nicholas
I, against the Hungarians, who had revolted. These were the methods
by which Francis-Joseph established his power, relying upon perjury
and foreign bayonets. And the third was to abandon Russia in 1856
when she needed his help and "to astonish the world by his
ingratitude." Such was the beginning of a reign that was
to last for sixty-eight years.

Faith in dynasties was still very strong in Austria in the
middle of the nineteenth century. It is sufficient to note the
prestige still enjoyed by Francis-Joseph on the eve of the Great
War and the veneration he inspired in his subjects, even though
alien, to understand what his power must have been half a century
earlier. If, by resolutely following a new policy, Francis-Joseph
had tried to build up the glory of his house upon the satisfaction
of his people he could have made of his country the strongest
federation in all Europe.

He did exactly the contrary. Magenta, Solferino and Sadowa,
two unfortunate wars, the loss of the dominant position held by
Austria in Germany, the unity of Italy and the expulsion of the
Austrians from Milan and Venice, where they had been welcomed
as saviors in 1814, were necessary to force Francis-Joseph to
make a compromise with his people. It was this that gave Ferdinand,
who had been dethroned in 1848, the opportunity to ask the question
"Why was I dethroned? I should have been quite as capable
of losing battles and provinces as my nephew."

Although the concessions that Francis-Joseph had then been
obliged to make still rankled in his mind and though he more than
once prevented their application, the half-century that followed
1867 was the most peaceful and harmonious period of his reign.

Francis-Joseph was a short man, but all who knew him bear testimony
to his imperial dignity, his simplicity of manner and to the conscientious
way in which he fulfilled every duty. A believer in pomp, convinced
that ceremony is necessary to the brilliance of a throne, he liked
official functions, but not in excess. A great hunter, he rarely
indulged in any other amusement. His journal, like that of Louis
XVI and of most rulers, records nothing more important than the
number of animals killed in a day. Very succinct in his correspondence,
he did not hesitate to write many pages to his friend Prince Albert
of Saxony, telling him all the details of a hunt at Ischl.

As time went on Francis-Joseph learned the rules of his profession.
An indefatigable worker, he insisted on seeing everything himself,
knowing everything, noting everything. He never, until a most
advanced age, gave up the practice of giving collective audiences
to those of his subjects who had any personal request to make,
and he saw to it that his decisions in such cases were carried
out.

Francis-Joseph was the greatest bureaucrat in his empire, the
most assiduous, the most accurate, the most scrupulous. He was
the very incarnation of a monarchy that had always been characteristically
bureaucratic and inquisitorial. Thus he was able to inculcate
methods of orderliness and accuracy into the administration of
his country that had considerable influence on its development
and prosperity during his reign.

But orderliness, application and hard work are not necessarily
royal virtues. Francis-Joseph lacked the breadth of vision, the
imagination and courage that are essential in a true head of a
state. It is undoubtedly because of this that he was doubly unfortunate,
in his family and in his diplomacy.

Francis-Joseph seems never to have known a grande passion.
If he did so in his youth, history does not record it. Married
to a woman, dreamy, romantic and nervous, with whom he had nothing
in common, he found a sister soul in Madame Schratt, an actress
at the Burg Theatre. Until his extreme old age he either went
to see her or sent her a note every day---whence his affectionate
nickname of "Herr Schratt" among the Viennese. But this
liaison, though tolerated by every one, including the Empress,
had little real influence on him in his private life and still
less on his political opinions.

Francis-Joseph put his duties as head of the house of Hapsburg
before those as head of the State. But his family was a source
of endless trouble to him. Although faith in dynasties was still
alive among the people it barely existed among the Hapsburgs themselves.
This family, which a lucky chance had brought from its Swiss castle
in the thirteenth century, had reigned too long. The reason why
dynasties have declined or rather the evidence of their decline
is that their own members have lost faith in them. Privileges
are justified only by the obligations they bring with them, but
modern princes shrink from the obligations while retaining the
privileges. Few archdukes or archduchesses shared the Emperor's
spirit of sacrifice to their name and to their blood, and he suffered
greatly in his dignity and his most deeply rooted prejudices on
account of numerous mésalliances, renunciations
and scandals. Besides these injuries to his pride he was the victim
of tragedy and bereavement. His brother Maximilian, Emperor of
Mexico, was shot and Maximilian's widow lost her reason; the Archduke
Rudolph, the only son of Francis-Joseph, committed suicide for
love under mysterious circumstances; the Empress was assassinated
in Geneva; her sister perished in a fire in Paris; and, finally,
his nephew and heir-presumptive, Francis-Ferdinand, was assassinated
at Serajevo on June 28th, 1914.

For a long time his stoicism was admired. These blows were
powerless to shake him. He seemed to have a soul of iron; his
fortitude was compared to that of the heroes of antiquity. But
the world wearies of admiring. When he buried his nephew, after
having buried his son and his wife, without shedding a tear, without
flinching and without a trace of regret, a doubt arose as to whether
this wonderful fortitude was after all merely egoism, hardness
of heart and indifference.

No one who is indifferent to his own family can care for the
needs of his people. What was lacking in Francis-Joseph throughout
his long career was warmth, sympathy, feeling, the instinct of
understanding for the sufferings of others. It was probably this
trait in his character that prevented him from understanding his
time and his country.

Francis-Joseph was no fool. He knew how to deal with people
and he managed skillfully to "divide in order to reign."
For a long time he was able to set the various nationalities against
each other, arousing opposition in each and giving his support
first to one and then to another, in short, as they say in Austria,
to fortwursteln---to "wangle"his way.

But such methods are unworthy of a great ruler, and they finally
brought Francis-Joseph to unprecedented disaster.

Our epoch has been dominated by the struggle of the peoples
towards democracy. This is no fortuitous or arbitrary phenomenon.
Democracy is the daughter of compulsory public education, itself
a result of the progress of machinery. Industry has forced men
to live in towns, where they have demanded better education and
a greater degree of comfort. Being educated they are no longer
willing to be governed without being consulted. Such inevitable
and powerful tendencies should have been recognized by the head
of a state.

Nationalism is the direct outcome of democracy. If men do not
wish to be governed without their consent they will tolerate still
less being governed by people who are of a different nationality
and do not speak their language.

Austria-Hungary was a mosaic of different nations bound together
only by chance events in history, having no other unity than the
person of their ruler, no continuity other than the dynasty. If
the Emperor had realized in time the direction in which the present
epoch was to evolve he could easily have. found a new and more
powerful principle of unity in federalism. The loyalty of his
people would not have suffered, quite the reverse, and perhaps
far from being troubled with disruptive tendencies, monarchy might
have been able to attract and assimilate certain neighboring nations.

This is what Francis-Joseph would not see. He aimed at the
material development of his country and he brought it to a high
level of order and prosperity, but without seeing that the corollary
to these advantages was the increasing participation of the people
in the government. He completely forgot and ignored the fine motto
shining in golden letters on his palace in Vienna: "Justitia
fundamentum regnorum." He substituted for it this other archaic
motto: "Voluntas regis lex reipublicæ." The loyalty
of his people to him personally deceived him as to the solidarity
of the state. He devoted all his energies to retaining his royal
prerogatives. He even saw the actual symbol of his prestige and
power in such questions of secondary importance as the language
in which commands were given in the army. He made no effort to
induce the Hungarian government to adopt a just and moderate policy
with regard to the non-Magyar nations. In short, he thought that
his own person, the army and the police, could constitute a lasting
bond of union between his people. An error indeed!

Francis-Joseph's foreign policy was based upon similar and
equally mistaken theories. He could not gauge the power of the
monarchy either at home or abroad. He forced a foreign policy
beyond its capacity upon a state already undermined internally.
After the defeat at Sadowa, followed by the defeat of France at
Sedan, the Emperor sacrificed his anger and almost his dignity
by making an alliance with his conqueror, Bismarck. It seemed
to him that this alliance would make peace assured. And so it
did, for about twenty years. But the day came when Austria-Hungary
found herself involved in the policy of prestige and megalomania
pursued by William II as he grew older.

Under the shelter of the alliance, Austria-Hungary forgot her
own weakness. She was deceived by internal peace resulting from
the compromise of 1867. She indulged in great hopes. The annexation
of Bosnia in 1908 seemed to Francis-Joseph only to compensate
for the loss of Italy forty years before. All kings dream of leaving
their countries as great as when they came into power. D'Aerenthal
and the German alliance allowed Francis-Joseph to dream this dream.

A fleeting and dangerous triumph! Francis-Joseph did not realize
that the annexation of Bosnia brought with it bitterness and irredentism,
particularly the irredentism of the Serbs. From that moment the
aged and peace-loving monarch became an object of hatred and attack.
From that moment the government of Austria-Hungary lost its freedom
of action and alliance. Bismarck is reputed to have said: "In
every alliance there is one man and one horse"---that is
to say, the one rides the other. Until then, Germany, surrounded
by enemies, had been the horse, but from that moment the rôles
were reversed.

But by one of the tricks of fate that befall declining monarchies,
Francis-Joseph was left at that moment with no other adviser than
Count Berchtold, an elegant aristocrat, inconsistent and weak-willed.
It is said of him that it was far from the intention to the will
and from the will to the decision, and still further from the
decision to the action. Confronted by Tschirschky, the imperious
ambassador of William II, by the heads of the army, the head of
the Hungarian government, Count Tisza, and the head of his Cabinet,
Count Forgasch, all of whom wanted war, this man positively ceased
to exist.

It is characteristic of an improvident government to allow
matters to become so acute that a peaceful settlement is no longer
possible: "There are a number of questions in the world,"
says a certain philosopher on politics, "that can never be
settled. At first attempts are made to decide them by diplomatic
measures; these fail, and war is the next resource; then upon
the realization that war decides nothing, there is a return to
diplomacy." This thought might well be the epigraph on the
reign of Francis-Joseph.

The assassination of the Archduke Francis-Ferdinand left Francis-Joseph
completely cold. He did not care for his nephew. He was afraid
of the complications in the dynasty that would arise upon the
accession of a man whose wife and children had no right to reign.
He hated the ideas of the Archduke, who supported a policy in
favor of the Slav nationalists. The death of the heir came as
a relief to Francis-Joseph and his court, who thought that the
time had at last come to crush this nationalist movement already
too long encouraged by Francis-Ferdinand. It was not to avenge
Francis-Ferdinand that Austria made war; it was to kill for the
second time his projects and his ideas. In order to stamp out
the propaganda in favor of the Serbs, the reality and importance
of which no one can to-day appreciate, these foolish advisers
were going to set fire to Europe, ruin their country, and realize
the wildest hopes of the unassimilated races. Truly a fine piece
of work!

Austria believed that she took the initiative in this affair.
She did not see that she was maneuvered. Francis-Joseph saw it
less than any one. Already enfeebled by age, he meekly signed
all papers put before him, with no regard for their importance.
This was how he signed the first declaration of war that was to
involve the whole of Europe. Without a word he took upon himself
the most appalling responsibility that has ever rested upon a
human conscience ---that of the death of ten million men.

Francis-Joseph lived for two years longer---completely forgotten
by the world. He lived long enough to witness the sufferings of
his people, but not long enough to see their anger. And when on
November 21 st, 1916, he closed his eyes in the palace of Schönbrunn,
where he had spent his whole life, he could have felt the first
tremors of the shock that was shortly afterwards to bring the
empire about the ears of his successor.

.

NICHOLAS II

THERE IS A CURSE ON OMNIPOTENCE. THE HUMAN MIND, in the average
man at least, offers no resistance to the consciousness of being
above control. That consciousness acts as a solvent on those souls
which do not rise to exceptional moral heights. How many colonial
administrators who, lost in the bush among a native population,
have furnished no end of scandals for the newspapers, would have
been peaceable citizens in their own land? And in time of war,
when passions are unleashed and impunity assured, how many otherwise
peaceable citizens have abandoned themselves to atrocities and
pillage? Omnipotence is a deadly poison.

Nicholas II, paragon of all the bourgeois virtues, conscientious,
scrupulous, good husband and good father, would have been the
best of his own subjects. He would have lived in the respect of
his friends and died in the peace of the Lord. He might even---who
knows?---have made a very good constitutional monarch of the type
of his cousin, George V, to whom he was further linked by an extraordinary
physical resemblance. His misfortune lay in the fact that he was
the autocrat of All the Russias, feeble heir to a mighty empire,
the holder of colossal power, and in exceptionally difficult circumstances.
It was that power and those circumstances, for neither of which
he was fitted, which overwhelmed him and brought him to his terrible
and undeserved end in the dark cellar at Ekaterinenburg.

Supreme power, always a test for man, becomes in reality the
most terrible of calamities when it is associated with weakness
of character. It was so with Nicholas II, he was an autocrat by
law, but he was weak-willed and changeable, and he was the head
of a state whose internal weakness sprang from ancient and deep-rooted
causes.

The tragedy of the Russian people has been that it has seen
its natural evolution violently arrested by Peter the Great and
his successors. Asiatic by origin, memories, tradition and legend,
Russia has suddenly been turned with her face towards the West.
From it she has had to take her morality and certain institutions,
without being able to borrow with these the spirit which alone
inspires morality and makes institutions live. The Russian people
have never recovered from that drama of history; the soul of Russia,
wrenched from its axis, has remained bewildered and disturbed.
Hence her mystery, her pessimism, her leaning towards anarchy,
her dreaming, her lack of the power to will and do---all the defects
and all the qualities which, in the eyes of the West, go to make
her charm.

This sudden break with tradition has fallen more heavily on
the house of Romanoff than on any other Russian family. For the
carrying out of the Western policy as conceived by Peter the Great
the Tsars were unable to find in Russia the necessary personnel
fitted for functions so foreign to the real nature of the Russian
soul. They had of necessity to import that personnel---mostly
from Germany, but from other nationalities as well. At the Congress
of Vienna, Alexander I had about him two Germans (Nesselrode and
Stein), a Corsican (Pozzo di Borgo), a Greek (Capo d'Istria),
a Pole (Czartoryski), and a Swiss (La Harpe). In his immediate
entourage there was not a single Russian. And so it was up to
the very end with the Fredericks, the Benckendorffs, and the Sturmers
of Nicholas II. "There are only ten Germans in Russia,"
it was said during the War. "But they are all around the
Tsar."

There is nothing so dangerous for a nation as a division between
the aristocracy and the people. From generation to generation
the Tsars have been losing touch more and more with their subjects,
separated from them as they were by an all-powerful administration.
This bureaucracy, excellent in its beginnings and modeled on the
German hierarchy, set up by the Tsars to inculcate into the people
the methods and civilization of the West, lived only by its creators.
The autocracy of the Tsar was at once the pledge and the basis
of its power. So it was that the administration strove to concentrate
all possible power in the hands of the Tsar, that is, in its own.
Russia, so vast, so heterogeneous that her peoples called for
a government that was localized and adapted to their individual
needs---this Russia became the most centralized state in the world.
And all these powers were concentrated in a single man, the Tsar,
who neither knew this great unwieldy country nor ever guessed
at its hidden reactions.

This régime, which might have been proper in the eighteenth
century, became less and less suited to the social and moral condition
of the people. The advance of industry, the concentration of population
in the towns, the spread of education and comfort, created a class
of intellectual bourgeoisie who suffered uneasily a rule in which
they had no share. And yet, as often happens, the autocracy was
to fall not by the evil that it did but by the good.

In 1861 Alexander II, the grandfather of Nicholas II, decreed
the emancipation of the serfs. He saw perfectly clearly that the
result of this initial reform must be the introduction of a certain
amount of popular control in political institutions. But Alexander
II was assassinated in 1881, without having lived to see the realization
of his project, and his death marked the beginning of a period
of autocratic reaction. While the social condition of Russia was
approaching nearer and nearer to that of Europe, her political
condition was drawing further and further away; Alexander III,
inspired by Pobiedonostzev, gave to the word "autocrat"
a meaning that it did not originally have. For, as M. Sazonov
recalled, the word "autocrat" had in the first instance
been a synonym in the history of Russia for "sovereign"
and "independent" as regards foreign control.

It was during the reign of Alexander III that the misunderstanding
between the Tsar and his people was aggravated, and that misunderstanding
Nicholas II inherited at his accession. The young Tsar had no
sooner ascended the throne than he received delegations from the
nobles and the "zemetvos" (councils elected from the
provinces and towns) who had come to offer their congratulations.
He was, he says in his diary, "in the grip of a terrible
emotion." That did not prevent him from reading them a short
speech which had been prepared for him by the late Tsar's adviser,
Pobiedonostzev, and in which he said that any hope of the people
having a voice in the direction of public affairs was a "foolish
dream." It was on that day, the 17th of January, 1895, that
Nicholas II signed his own death warrant.

There are virtues which are more fatal in a ruler than vices.
None of the three emperors reigning in Europe at the beginning
of the War was a man of dissolute morals, and it might be said
of all three that it was a great pity. There was no feminine influence
surrounding William II or Francis-Joseph, but it was to Nicholas
II, the most virtuous of the three, that his virtue proved most
fatal.

The character of Nicholas II was distinguished by three main
traits---submission to his father, submission to his wife, submission
to God.

Nicholas II was above all a good son. His relations with his
mother were very intimate and he wrote her the most affectionate
letters. When his father died, leaving to the young man the burden
of power, he (Nicholas) saw only an occasion for mourning and
grief in the event that was to make him an all-powerful emperor.

He was a man of one idea, that God, in giving him the heritage
of his father, had commanded him to hand it on intact to his son!
Nicholas II never had any conception of his duty to his country,
or to the people whose well-being he was to promote. Even to his
ministers he was absolutely cold and never showed the least evidence
of gratitude. He looked upon them as slaves. When Stolypine, the
greatest of his servants, had been assassinated for him and before
his eyes, his successor was about to say some words of condolence
to the Tsar. The Tsar stopped him with a gesture "He is dead!"

The only duty that Nicholas II acknowledged was to his family,
to his father and to his son. His conception of supreme power
could be summed up in the one word "heritage."

So narrow a view of political realities could not but lead
him to his ruin. The world evolves, circumstances change every
moment. To conserve what you have you must know what to give up
and what to hold firmly. Immobility is only apparently conservative.
Nicholas II, alone immovable in a world full of movement, could
not fail to be outstripped in the race, and lose what he had tried
to keep intact. He was like the unfaithful servant in the Parable
of the Talents.

FRANCIS-JOSEPH

NICHOLAS II

Nicholas II, unlike William II, never had
the. idea of giving up the ways of his father and ridding himself
of his advisers. He kept Pobiedonostzev beside him, the old man
who had been his tutor and had inculcated in him the principles
of unlimited absolutism. Up to the death of Pobiedonostzev he
followed his advice in everything, as if it had come from his
father himself. Alexander III reigned on twenty years after his
own death. In a sense Nicholas II deserved great praise for taking
such a stand, for by temperament he was the reverse of autocratic:
he had no will power and it cost him an effort to make any decision.
He was intelligent, his judgment was sure and quick, he looked
at all the questions submitted to him from every point of view,
weighed the pros and cons, and never came to any conclusion. All
the letters which his wife wrote to him when he was at the front
or traveling are full of this advice: "Be strong! Be determined!
Never forget that you are an autocrat!"

Nicholas II applied himself to his task as a good pupil applies
himself to a disagreeable exercise. But he never liked it; M.
Paléologue, the French Ambassador at Petrograd, writes:
"Nicholas II does not love the exercise of his power. If
he jealously defends his absolute prerogatives it is purely on
mystical grounds. He never forgets that his power comes from God
and he is constantly thinking of the account he will have to give
of it in the valley of Jehosaphat."

Nicholas II never ceased to suffer from the decisions that
he had to make, and, moreover, he was under no illusions as to
the reality of his power. "You have more power than I have,"
he said one day to M. Albert Thomas, French Minister of Munitions.
"When you give an order, it is carried out!"

This model son was an excellent husband, a touchingly affectionate
parent. Not only had he made a love-match with the Princess Alix
of Hesse, but on the throne he constantly showed his affection.
"Every day," he wrote, "I bless the Lord and thank
Him from the bottom of my soul for the happiness which He has
granted me. No one could wish for greater happiness on this earth."
And his wife on her side writes: "Never did I believe there
could be such happiness in this world, such a feeling of unity
between two mortal beings."

These mutual feelings lasted throughout their married life.
The correspondence of the Empress to the Emperor during the War
has been published and is full of loving outpourings: "My
dear, my treasure, my well-beloved, my very dear love, my little
bird," such are the names which she constantly gives him.
"I cannot get accustomed to not having you here at home,
even for a little while, although I have my five treasures with
me . . . my heart and my soul are always near you, with the most
tender and passionate love. I shall miss you cruelly, my precious
love. Sleep well, my darling. Oh, how empty my bed will be!"

These few examples, which could be multiplied, will serve to
show what a love united these two beings on the most exalted throne
in the world. Sir George Buchanan, a former English Ambassador
to Petrograd, in speaking of the tragedy which cut off Nicholas
II and his wife, wrote, "The only ray of light in the dark
picture is the fact that, united as they had been in their lives,
they remained so till the end, and that in death they were not
divided."

Nevertheless, all those who had access to the Empress noticed
the sad expression of her face and the tragic look in her eyes.
The reason was not only that she detested public life and the
pomp of ceremonial display, that she was never happy except in
the warmth of her own apartments with her husband and children;
it lay above all in the fact that her innermost life was tortured
by a double anxiety: for the life of her husband, constantly threatened
by assassins, and for the life of her son, threatened by an inexorable
disease.

It was these anxieties, all born of love, which poisoned the
life of Nicholas II and finally brought him to his end. Tragic
outcome of a noble emotion! The Empress, who was neurotic, and
probably hysterical, found her health ruined by the emotional
strain. The Tsar, fearing above all things to provoke one of the
nervous crises to which she was subject, now deferred to her wishes
in everything, more from fear than from love. Thus the Tsarina
found herself possessed of a power quite out of proportion to
her intelligence, her political acumen, and her knowledge of the
country whose sovereign she was.

By an extraordinary mischance this woman, Protestant by birth,
German by education, and English in feeling, acquired from the
Russian character the most unlikely trait to appeal to the Western
mind, its superstitious mysticism, its love of miracle and magic.
All, through the reign, the court of Russia was filled with "staretz,"
men of God who were more or less charlatans and generally quite
uneducated. There was first the monk Iliodore, then an illiterate
deaf-mute whose grunts were interpreted as the decrees of God,
then the butcher's boy, Philippe of Lyons, then the Montenegrin
Mordary, and many others even before the notorious Rasputin.

No breath of suspicion can be attached to the relations between
the Tsarina and Rasputin. But this dissolute charlatan made use
of his influence over the Empress, her daughters and Mme. Viroubova,
who was very intimate with them, and through these women over
Nicholas II, to serve his spites, his prejudices, and his interests.
In the darkest hours of the War his influence was all-powerful.
It was he who had Sazonov dismissed, who appointed Sturmer, protected
Soukhomlinov and maintained Protopopov in favor---the vultures
of Russia.

The power of Rasputin lay in the fact that the Empress saw
in him the one intercessor with God, the miraculous protector
of the health of her son, the dispenser of divine counsel. "The
Empress," wrote M. Paléologue, the French Ambassador,
on June 28th, 1916, "is going through a bad phase. Too many
prayers, too many fasts, too much asceticism, excitement and insomnia.
She is beside herself, and her mind is set more and more on the
idea that she has a mission to save Holy Orthodox Russia and that
the knowledge, favor, and protection of Rasputin are indispensable
to her success. At every turn she asks the Staretz for his advice,
his encouragements, and his blessing."

When Rasputin was dead---assassinated by a prince and a grand
duke, the Empress wrote with her own hand this note which she
herself placed on his breast as he lay in the coffin: "My
beloved martyr, give me your blessing that it may follow me on
the sorrowful way I have to travel here below, and remember us
in Heaven, in your holy prayers!"

Unfortunately, the death of Rasputin did not serve the royal
family so well as its authors had hoped. First of all he was quickly
replaced, and by a man even more worthless than he---Protopopov,
the Minister of the Interior. He used to crawl under tables on
all fours, imitating the cries of animals, and he made use of
mediums to call up the spirit of Rasputin before the imperial
family. Secondly, and this proved fatal, the assassination of
the man in whom Their Majesties saw their protector and their
hope, confirmed the Tsar and his whole entourage in the conviction
that God had forsaken them.

This conviction was of long standing. "At the court,"
a high official once said to M. Paléologue, "people
have noticed for a long time how unlucky the Emperor is. It is
well known that he fails in all that he undertakes, that fate
is always against him; in short, that he is obviously doomed to
disaster. Besides, it seems that the lines of his hand are terrifying."

At the coronation festivities in Moscow over two thousand moujiks
were trampled in a crowd. A few weeks later the Emperor saw a
boat laden with three hundred passengers sink in the Dnieper before
his eyes. His favorite minister, Prince Lebanoff, died suddenly
in his train, in his very presence; he ardently wished for a son,
and four daughters were born before his wife presented him with
an heir, who was smitten with an incurable hereditary disease---hæmophilia.
After he had longed for peace on earth, and called the Hague Conference
of 1899, he let himself be embroiled in a war with Japan in which
he lost all his armies and his whole fleet. Thereupon a revolution
broke out, riots and massacres followed in quick succession. The
people were shot down in the public square of the Winter Palace.
His uncle, the Grand Duke Sergius, the Governor of Moscow, was
assassinated, then his minister Stolypine, he who seemed to be
destined to be the savior of Russia, fell in his presence under
the bullets of an assassin in the pay of the police. Then there
was the War.

On closer scrutiny this tragic succession of events is less
due to chance and ill-luck than to mistakes in government, incapable
administration, and police corruption. But how could Nicholas
II with his mystical temperament fail to see in all this the hand
of God? "I am firmly convinced," he said to M. Isvolsky
one day when the cannonade of the fleet against the revolutionaries
could be heard in the distance, "that the fate of Russia,
of myself, and my family is in the hands of God, who has set me
where I am." And after he had decided, in 1915, to take over
the command of the army himself, he said, "It may be that
Russia can only be saved by an atoning sacrifice. I shall be that
sacrifice. May God's will be done!"

In that respect Nicholas II was a true son of his country.
Was it not one of his ministers who said one day to the French
Ambassador, "When things do not go well, I am resigned. When
they go badly, I despair"? And when he noticed a gesture
of surprise from the Ambassador, he added, "You forget that
I am a Russian."

Nicholas II had received two fundamental political ideas from
his father. The one was domestic---Autocracy; the other, foreign---the
French alliance. It was these two ideas combined which finally
brought on the catastrophe to which he succumbed.

As we have seen, the misunderstanding which separated him from
his people dated back to the first days of his reign. It was aggravated
in a terrible way in 1905; the police shot down the crowd that
had come before the Emperor carrying ikons. When the people had
dispersed the snow was strewn with hundreds of corpses. It was
an unforgettable sight. It might be said without paradox that
Nicholas II was at heart gentle, humane, honorable. But how are
you to make people believe this, when they see only that prisons
are full, that Siberia is peopled with exiles, and that promises
are violated! Kingship is subject to these contradictions.

In 1905, Nicholas II yielded to the entreaties of his counsellors
and granted a constitution. But far from being proud of it, far
from seeing in it the most glorious act of his reign, he never
ceased to reproach himself for such treason to his father's memory.
His wife, who knew his weakness, exhorted him to be strong. Consumed
by remorse, Nicholas dismissed Count Witte, who had forced the
constitution upon him. He appointed other ministers and allowed
them to violate the promises he had made to the people. The Duma
was dissolved, the constitutional safeguards abolished. The people
learned that they could not trust the word of their Emperor.

There is only one justification for autocracy---that it is
beneficent and efficient. This one was not. The administration
was deplorable and corrupt. Far from stimulating the development
of the country it opposed all individual initiative for fear of
the people. Not only did the state make no roads, but it forbade
landowners to make them on their own land. And two great wars
revealed the fact that Tsarism was no more efficient in time of
war than in time of peace.

Nicholas II had dreamed a very noble dream of universal peace.
When in 1899 he summoned the Hague Conference he took the most
forward step of any statesman before the War. But he was incapable
of carrying out his own will. In 1904 he allowed himself to be
drawn into a fruitless war with Japan and in 1914 with William
II, the only man of Modern Europe in whom he could see a support
for autocracy.

Nicholas II certainly did not want the War. He came into it
reluctantly and he deserves great credit if he remained to the
end a faithful ally of the western powers. For his entourage was
German in origin, education and sympathies, and he could not fail
to see the dangers in which such a conflict placed his throne.
If he had been victorious (which he doubtless never for one moment
believed) it would have meant the victory of western democracy,
the end of all the ideas that were dear to him. If he lost, it
meant revolution, which even then all the world saw coming.

One day the King of Spain asked M. Jules Cambon if he would
advise him to institute compulsory military service in his country.
The French diplomat, one of the cleverest men of our time, made
this remarkable reply, "Sire, look to your throne!"

M. Jules Cambon was right. A professional army is a support
to a throne, but universal service is a threat to it. This was
peculiarly the case in Russia. Never had such an enormous mass
of moujiks been brought together. They were transported far from
their homes, they saw something of their country, they were better
fed than usual, they were decently clothed, their horizon was
enlarged, their needs were increased, and, after all that, they
were given rifles without ammunition---and were sent to their
death without a chance of defending themselves.

For these troops officers were needed. In a country where there
is not a large middle class almost all the intellectuals have
to be taken. Many of these had advanced ideas, and the army of
the Tsar become a hotbed of revolutionary propaganda.

While at the front the inefficiency of the civil and military
administration was obvious to all, by faults of strategy. and
insufficient commissariat, a sly rumor went about that there was
treason at court. But there was no treason properly speaking;
there was an extraordinary accumulation of mistakes in policy.
The greatest was the dismissal of Sazonov and the retraction of
the promises which the Grand Duke Nicholas had made to Poland
in the name of the Tsar. It was the history of the 1905 constitution
repeating itself.

While the Emperor was at Headquarters, Rasputin and then Protopopov
ruled in the name of the Empress; at such a spectacle the most
patriotic Russians became revolutionaries in order to save their
country. At last the upper classes joined with the people---but
too late. M. Paléologue notes that in 1916 and 1917 Nicholas
II was spoken of in court circles in the same way as was Paul
I, who died at the assassin's hand. But things were to take a
different course, even more sanguinary. Only the Tsarina, blinded
by her love, did not see what was coming.

The revolution gave to this model family the only hours of
real happiness that it had ever known. Nicholas II had ceased
to be emperor: the cares of state no longer weighed on his faltering
shoulders. He was no longer tortured by having to make decisions.
His insomnia had gone. Prisoners together, first at Tsarskoe Selo,
then at Tabolsk, the Tsar, his wife, and his children never separated,
and they enjoyed their re-found happiness to the full.

Alas, that joy was not to be of long duration. Kerensky, to
whom Nicholas said one day in an expansive moment, "Ah, Monsieur
Kerensky, if I had known you earlier what a government we would
have made between us!"---Kerensky was replaced by the Bolsheviks.

The calvary of the imperial family had begun. It was by the
nobility of her attitude then that the Empress redeemed twenty
years of mistaken policy. Her refusal to leave the Emperor was
so categorical that even the Bolsheviks did not dare to separate
them. It was by her wish that they all walked together to their
death,---to that horrible massacre in the cellar at Ekaterinenburg
which dishonored forever the Bolshevik régime.

Alas, Nicholas II was perhaps right. There is a fate that hangs
over peoples, families and individuals. This is what the great
Russian writer Merejkowski wrote in 1905:

"In the house of Romanoff as in that of Atreus, a mysterious
curse passes from generation to generation. Murder follows adultery
and bloodshed, the fifth act of a tragedy is played out in a brothel,
Peter I kills his son, Alexander I kills his father, Catherine
II kills her husband, and among these great and famous victims
there are the little ones, the unknowns, the unhappy abortions
of autocracy like Ivan Antonovitch, strangled like mice in dark
corners, in the dungeons of Schlüsselburg. The block, the
rope, the poison phial---these are the true emblems of the Russian
autocracy. The divine unction on the head of the Tsar is transformed
into the brand and curse of Cain."